Referred to simply as an
"amateur historian" in the September/October 2009 issue of Mother
Jones, Phil Mellinger's
recent research on Watergate and specifically the infamous "18 ½ Minute
Gap" challenges the traditionally held views pertaining to the number of
erasures that occurred, who directed them, and whether we can hope to recover
any of the contents of the conversation itself. (Read the complete Mother
Jones article on Mellinger's work by clicking on the front cover image to
the left.)

The conventional theory related
to the "18 ½ Minute Gap" is that when President Nixon and Chief of
Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman gathered in the president's private office
in the Executive Office Building on June 20, 1972 —

three days after the
Watergate break-in —

they must have discussed something about Watergate. Perhaps
they discussed White House foreknowledge of the break-in at the offices of the
Democratic National Committee, or perhaps an order was given to destroy
evidence, or maybe they considered an early call to instruct the Central
Intelligence Agency to stop the accelerating FBI investigation. Otherwise, how
could 18 ½ minutes of the conversation have been "accidentally" later
erased during the
peak of the Congressional inquiry into Watergate the cover-up? Most observers
have long maintained that the erasure was more than a coincidence, if not
deliberate.

Mellinger's work not only offers
new hope that we may be able to recover the material discussed during the period
of time coinciding with the erasure, but he has also come to a new conclusion
about the erasure itself. The Mother Jones article explores Mellinger's
present collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA) to see if the missing pages from Haldeman's notes from the June 20, 1972
conversation can be recovered by reading impressions left by Haldeman's pen on adjacent pages of his notes. While numerous unsuccessful attempts have been
made to recover the erased recording itself, this represents a new approach to
excavating the contents of the meeting that has been the subject of so much
intrigue over the course of the past 35 years.

In addition, Mellinger has new
theories about the erasure itself, including how it was made and even who may have
directed its erasure. While the advisory panel
that originally analyzed the tape erasure concluded that it was not one erasure
attempt but nine overlapping erasures, Mellinger has concluded that in fact ten
erasures actually occurred. To listen to the complete conservation from June 20,
1972, including the 18 ½ minute gap, see inset below.

Why does any of this matter?
After all, is it likely to change our understanding of Watergate, or the
president's involvement? The best answer we have is "maybe"
(after clicking, scroll down to "Notes on a Scandal"). The most
promising aspect of Mellinger's research is that even if it yields no
groundbreaking results, the fact that over time new forms of technology allow us
to come to new conclusions based on old evidence is fascinating.

Whether we are
talking about a new technique to recover Haldeman's notes, or whether more
advanced computers allow us to analyze fractions of a second of audio to achieve
a fuller understanding of the technical specifications of the erasure itself,
these are techniques that were not possible in the early 1970s, and they are
therefore exciting in their own right.

More than anything else, the fact
that human creativity continuously attempts to find better solutions to
persistent problems means that our best hope of solving the remaining mysteries
related to the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up will always be in the
future. However, at present, Mellinger's conclusions are thought-provoking and
deserve our attention, as well as appropriate scrutiny.